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Wouldn’t hurt a deer? Dude they’re called that because they’re shouting about it all the time (that’s what their call spunds like). Racist little fuckers.

How many distinct genomes are there that we include under the label “smallpox”? It’s also a great deal more complicated than simply storing the genome - much as gene expression in humans is more complicated than simply “this is what the DNA says”, it’s also more complicated than that for viruses. We’re finally to the point that we can simulate interactions, but it’s -absolutely- not a trivial thing to do (supercomputer shit) and simply saving the source material prevents any risk of loss of information.

We’re not to the point that that’s possible.

That is either a fucking cold or a fucking hot room, wtf?

Measuring horse height in hands is oldschool, we measure it in Mr. hands now.

Yeah it’s not that simple, wikipedia has a good summary:

Advocates of final destruction maintain that there is no longer any valid rationale for retaining the samples, which pose the hazard of escaping the laboratories, while opponents of destruction maintain that the samples may still be of value to scientific research, especially since variants of the smallpox virus may still exist in the natural world and thus present the possibility of the disease re-emerging in the future or being used as a bio-weapon.

Given that the radiation of nuclear waste has frequency way higher than UV, why can’t it be used to feed a photoelectric generator?

You’re probably using one of these right now (albeit indirectly)! They’re called Photovoltaic nuclear batteries and they’re critical to modern encryption. They ensure that encryption keys, which are stored in highly volatile memory (memory where if power is ever lost the contents are immediately erased), never lose power unless the memory modules are physically disconnected.

The reason they’re not used more extensively is that they just don’t produce very much power - the high-energy electromagnetic radiations are very difficult to harness constructively (things like gamma and X-rays) and as a result we have to do some weird physics stuff to convert them. PVN batteries convert particle radiation, beta radiation from tritium decay specifically, into usable photons via a thin coating of phosphorus on the glass, instead of them being captured directly.

(this is a wild oversimplification just to be clear)

At least in the US, the mother’s health insurance policy (assuming she has one) will automatically extend to cover children born while the mother is under coverage.

The FBI said the information came from a “sensitive source with excellent access” and introduced the report as a warning about “extremist actors targeting law enforcement officers and federal facilities”.

Remember kids, look into securing your phone & only add people to your group chats that you have good reason to trust.

It’s depressingly predictable that this article doesn’t talk at all about the push to restore the Brazilian military presence in Ecuador. That was a huge aspect of the national discourse around this topic that is strangely ignored in pretty much all the english-language reporting on this issue. It feels very much like this was written not to celebrate the victory for Ecuadorian independence, but to claim a loss for the US on a topic I do not know if a single major american news outlet has even mentioned. Most people in the US can’t find Ecuador on a map, the trump officials doubtlessly included. It’s a damn miracle Kristi Noem managed to land in the right country.

There was little real push from the US to even allow bases again, which is part of why this failed so spectacularly - nobody, noem seemingly included, is entirely clear on why Noboa was so heavily invested in getting the US back except because it was the only way he could see to signal his allegiance to trump. It was just extremely odd all around, and a spectacular demonstration that Noboa and his far right cronies have no idea what the hell they’re doing.

Hopefully just activate ILS. There’s no way you wouldn’t be diverted to an airport that doesn’t require a Cat III landing, even a IIIA is stupid dangerous for a trained crew. iirc you only have a 1-2 second correction window for any Cat III landing where the ILS cuts out, compared to something like 8-10 for a Cat I (which is plenty of time for an amateur that’s been coached on the procedure to do a missed landing then give it back to the autopilot, that’s super easy). Plus the number of airports that can even do just a Cat II at least used to be pretty low (150 in the US?), and Cat III rated airports are even fewer (I dont think there’s double digits that can do a IIIB, and afaik there’s still none in the world rated for IIIC…)

(edit: came off more aggro than I meant, changed wording so I sound like less of a dick!)

Absolutely! It’s not about binaries, and I’m not and never have been advocating for a regime change.

You yourself have described them as socially conservative:

their social conservativism isn’t intrinsic to being Yemeni but is a consequence of nationalist resistance to imperialism

And I continue to agree - and the reality is that right now, as a consequence of the imperialist system they’re forced to exist within, they are a socially conservative government that supports authoritarian actions as a consequence of outside pressures. I don’t think either of us think they intrinsically are that way, but they are that way right now - and the result is a situation I am absolutely comfortable describing as a “nightmare” for queer people to live within.

I don’t think that every aspect of Yemen is a nightmare, nor that it is a nightmare for every Yemeni citizen. But it is for some of them, and carrying that through as a description since the originating topic was based on the plight of queer yemeni is not particularly unreasonable.

That’s the exact opposite of the point I was making.

Well… yes.

That’s pretty much exactly what I’ve been saying this entire time. To borrow your langauge: Reducing the situation to a simple binary (good/evil, “peak”/“struggling”, etc.) itself reinforces an imperialist narrative that removes the realities of the situation. By ignoring the actions they take that are negative, we allow that binary narrative to be forced upon them, removing any semblance of agency and reducing “conservative authoritarian nightmare” from a criticism of their government to a criticism of the country as a whole.

They cannot free themselves from imperialism if we use imperialist ideas like “Good vs. Evil” to quantify them.

I don’t believe I’ve made any such claims about yemen being “bad” nor that that would somehow justify imperialism. I referenced your use of pronouns to point out that you also can understand that supporting a cause is more complicated than simply ticking a box labeled “Support/Depose”, because you have a vested personal interest in the multifaceted nature of the topic.

My point throughout this has been that we should not excuse the bad things just because good things exist - that was the entire reason I called the US “The paragon of humanitarianism” or somesuch. It’s undeniably true that they give out more humanitarian aid than any other country, but that simple claim is both clearly not the full picture, nor does it somehow mean we should ignore their crimes.

If we’re going to support progressive social movements in Yemen, we must inherently accept that there is a state that warrants us progressing from. They are a socially conservative authoritarian nightmare, who tortuously put to death people extremely similar to both you and I. And yet despite that I still support their actions here. We should not hail them as a paragon of human rights, because they clearly are not, and doing so would invalidate the work of so many people who stand their lives against the social order in their country to try and secure a better life for people who have done nothing wrong. But we should also praise that “conservative authoritarian nightmare” regime’s actions here, because they have done something undeniably good.

The world is too complicated to have true paragons, and doing so oversimplifies reality to the point where we become comfortable with tragedy just because the binary says we must be.

The US Empire isn’t giving out true aid, though.

I’m curious what you consider ‘true’ aid - not within the context of the US’ behavior, but because you appear to have given this a great deal of thought and I’m curious about your thoughts on how the “idealized” (for lack of a better term) way to distribute aid should work. I have long opinions of my own I’ll spare you (in short NGOs are not in of themselves inherently bad to work with, especially when the government in question is dubiously moral), but I am quite curious about your thoughts on this.

Yemeni human rights abuses are in the context of victims of imperialism

Yes, absolutely. But while that does make them understandable, it does not make them justifiable. You yourself use gender neutral pronouns, which in many countries would see you subject to at best social persecution. While I can understand the reasons why they may persecute you for that, much as with the hyper-religious ‘christofascists’ of the US conservative movement, I cannot condone their actions nor agree that their justification is acceptable. That victims of abuse may themselves become abusers isn’t disputed, but it also does not make their victims any less victimized, or them any less guilty of that abuse.

Sure, and I quite agree that it happens - the only thing I’ve claimed is that the claim you’ve made (that it’s “usually just given to compradors as bribes”) is unsubstantiatable. You can’t prove it because nobody can, and what you provided me to support that claim is not actually evidence. It’s theory, not analysis, but it’s still important to be discussed.

Regardless of that though, I think you’ve misunderstood my initial point - That eventually there are sacks of grain with comedy US flags printed on them given out and that the existence of those grain sacks, or how they are used, does nothing to negate the myraid of crimes the US has committed. Much as how the Yemeni government joining a military coalition with a noble goal does nothing to erase the three decades of human rights abuses that has followed Yemeni unification.

If we are to hold ourselves over our enemies as morally superior, we have to hold ourselves to the same standards we condemn them with. Otherwise, we’re just the hypocrites so many people accuse us of being.

Okay: while I’m not arguing that it definitely happens, or arguing that if altruism can even exist, I’d like to point out that both those articles are written to present the perspective about why it happens, they do not present evidence for either how it happens nor it’s effectiveness in furthering imperialist goals.

It’s a bit of a gotcha question on my part, I admit - the evidence you would need to present to conclusively prove those claims doesn’t exist (or, rather, it does exist and it’s not reported). There’s many reasons for that, the first ones people arrive at being usually “that would prove it and the US obviously doesn’t want it proved” (legit) and “reporting which NGOs have cash on hand would make them targets” (also legit but a lot more complicated, leat of all because imperialist countries generally use the turmoil/“lawlessness” that created the problem itself as a tool of imperialism).

Okay. Do you have any evidence to support that claim?

Then I really don’t understand why it’s so hard for you to understand that those people are very faithful to god’s word and that sharia law has all logic to them.

I’m sorry, that’s not at all what I was trying to say. I understand the culture that this situation exists within, but while I understand how it happened, I do not think it is good that it has happened, or that we should respect that they kill people just because of the strength of their beliefs.

I don’t see how Islam can change in that regard

I know many queer muslims, and while I do not see a path forward for implementing queer rights in most muslim countries right now, the existence of so many different muslim groups should show that the quran is not a true monolith - this gives me hope that one day, there really can be peace.